On March 3, 2020, the first part of Final Fantasy VII Remake will release. It will cover Midgar, or in other words, cover about 20 percent of Final Fantasy VII. Why so little? Well, because each part is more or less comparable to a standalone Final Fantasy in terms of content. Now, I know what you’re thinking: how is this possible? Well, according to Square Enix, it isn’t just modernizing the RPG classic as meticulously as possible, but it’s making the game it wanted to back in the 90s, but couldn’t because of technical limitations.
“Remaking Final Fantasy VII has allowed us to dive much deeper into the world and its characters than ever before,” said producer Yoshinori Kitase while speaking about the game. “The game design was optimized for this title as well, and we anticipate two blu-ray discs worth of gameplay content.”
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As you can see, there’s so much content that Square Enix has to ship the game on two discs. The first game in this project “expands on the story of Midgar” so much, and is “such an elaborate retelling” that it has morphed into a “solid standalone game in its own right.”
“FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE goes much deeper into the world and characters of FINAL FANTASY VII than ever before.”
“It’s a huge volume of work and data to re-imagine this world. Each game in the project will have a volume of content comparable to a standalone FINAL FANTASY.” [2/5]
— FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE (@finalfantasyvii) June 12, 2019
“Due to the work already done on the first game we anticipate development of the second game to be more efficient. We have our own internal schedule and plan, but for now we’d like to focus our information on the first game in the project.” [4/5]
— FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE (@finalfantasyvii) June 12, 2019
“The first game in the project takes place in the eclectic city of Midgar, we chose to focus on Midgar as it best represents the world of VII as a location more than any other. Midgar is full of imagination with myriad influences and surprises around every corner” [5/5]
— FINAL FANTASY VII REMAKE (@finalfantasyvii) June 12, 2019
At the moment, it’s unclear how many parts this project will be divided into, but Square Enix does claim future parts will be faster to develop since the first part provides the foundation, which is the most time consuming part to create. Still, if the first part is only going to take us roughly 20 percent through the original, this could be divided up into as many as four or five parts, though I reckon we’ll probably see it release three parts.
Final Fantasy VII Remake will be available on PS4 when it launches. At the moment of publishing, there’s been no word of any additional ports.
For more news, media, and information on the highly-anticipated remake, be sure to peep all of our previous and extensive coverage of the game by clicking right here. And, as always, feel free to leave a comment or two with your thoughts or, alternatively, hit me up on Twitter @Tyler_Fischer_ and let me know over there.
